


Bedtime Monster

by FridaysAt9



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Monsters, Slime, Sweet, The Unremarkable House (X-Files), family life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:40:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23899876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FridaysAt9/pseuds/FridaysAt9
Summary: Will the Scully/Mulder family be brave enough to defeat the slimy, paranormal force that finds its way into their home?A little piece of fun in the unremarkable house based on the "Mulder and Scully story" my nine year old came up with while we made dinner.
Relationships: Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Comments: 6
Kudos: 35





	Bedtime Monster

**Author's Note:**

> My daughter was playing with slime at the kitchen table while I talked to my husband about the most recent exchange fics and she told me she wanted to write her own "Mulder and Scully story." As she wove her tale, I realized it would actually be fun to write and started to take notes. 
> 
> I have read the completed story for her, and I would have you know that she approves... except she is disappointed that I forgot to mention that the slime monster tried to eat all of their food. So let's just pretend that happened too. I know this is pretty different for a fic, but hey, we are in lockdown and things are getting a little weird. Hope you like it!
> 
> Oh and thank you to admiralty for helping me figure out how old Mulder and Scully's baby would be. My brain is tired.

“Ugh! Why is this so sticky? I followed the directions exactly!”   


Scully just shook her head as she put the vacuum back in the hall closet next to Mulder’s never used flip flops and his boxes of old road trip souvenirs. She knew what she was about to find in the kitchen, but was nervous just the same, imagining the clean up it would require. 

Sure enough, her family, a big scruffy man, a shaggy haired young adult and a cherubic, pudgy-faced toddler, were all covered in slime. As was the table, half the bowls from the cabinet and a series of spoons and measuring cups in various sizes.

“Mulder, what possessed you to make slime for a child who is not yet two and who can’t keep anything out of her mouth is beyond me,” Scully said, walking to the table to survey the damage. 

“You know how he is, Mom,” Jackson said, warming her heart. He still mostly referred to them as Dana and Mulder, the latter because even with his own son, Fox was off limits, but every now and then when he was feeling particularly comfortable, he would slip in a Mom or Dad that would make Scully’s stomach do a flip and her heart speed up. Never did she imagine being able to have both her children together in one house, even if they were a sticky, slimy mess. 

She sighed and grabbed the glitter covered bottle of contact solution that sat just out of reach of Lily’s grasp. 

“You’re lucky this stuff is non-toxic,” she said, noting the glob of goo in front of her daughter. “Relatively.”

“She hasn’t eaten any,” Mulder said. “I think.”

“You’re problem, Mulder, is that you haven’t added enough solution to form the chemical bonds needed to change this glue from a sticky mess to a stretchy substance,” she said as she squirted more saline in the bowl and over Mulder’s hands. “It’s just science. Cross-linking, rearranges the alignment of the molecules in the glue, giving the slime a different viscosity, thus, removing the stickiness.”

Mulder gave her a wink and turned to Lily, “Isn’t your mom the smartest?”

Lily responded with a loud and excited, “Ma! Ma! Ma!” and raised her arms in the air for Scully to pick her up. 

“Oh no way,” she said, rolling balls of slime off her fingers into the bowl. “No uppies until you get cleaned up.”   


“I can help Dana,” Jackson said, switching back to her name for a reason she couldn’t determine. She smiled at him just the same. 

“Thank you Jackson, but this was your father’s harebrained idea so he should probably reap the benefits of the endeavor- a slime covered baby.”

“Uh, Scully,” Mulder said, with an unsure tone in his voice. “Something seems to be happening here.”

Scully turned to see Mulder holding the bowl of slime, which seemed to have doubled in size in the time she was talking to Jackson. 

“Is it supposed to get bigger like that?” he asked. 

Scully was surprised by the reaction the slime was having, but figured there had to be some logical explanation. “There must have been something else in that glue,” she said, peering into the bowl at the orange slime that seemed to be moving slightly. “Did you add anything else to it at all? Baking soda? Shaving cream?”

“Scully, I researched and found the best recipe,” he told her, poking the slime with one finger. “Just glitter glue and contact lens solution. Nothing more, nothing less.”

“Dad, are you sure?” Jackson asked, looking scared, before unhooking Lily from her booster seat, picking her up and backing away from the table. 

“Mulder,” Scully said, starting to get concerned. “Throw that stuff in the trash. I don’t know what was in that glue, but if it keeps expanding like that it’s going to get everywhere.”

Mulder stood from the table and carried the bowl to the trash, stepping on the can’s pedal and upending the contents of the bowl into the bag. He let the lid fall shut and threw the bowl in the sink.

“Well that was a failure,” he said, rinsing off his hands.

“I could have told you that would happen,” Scully said, shaking her head. “Next time how about playing with her Elmo doll, or watching Dora together. Maybe hold off on the science at least until we can trust her not to shove it all in her mouth.”

“Uh, Dad,” came Jackson’s voice from across the room. “The garbage…”

Mulder and Scully turned to the can to see the orange blob overflowing and spreading out all over the kitchen floor.    
  
“What on earth?” Scully asked as Mulder grabbed her hand and pulled her into the living room.    
  
“I’ll get the mop,” he yelled, running towards the closet. 

“Jackson, keep Lily away from it,” Scully said as the slime continued to flow, growing by the minute. “Mulder, it… I think it’s heading towards me.”   


“What?” Mulder asked, running back, holding the mop in front of him like a lance. “What is this stuff?”

“How many times do I have to tell you to leave the science to me?” Scully asked.

“Is it making a sound?” Jackson asked from behind the couch. They all froze on the spot, straining to listen to anything out of the ordinary. Sure enough, there was a slight, high-pitched sound coming from the orange blob that continued to pool across the floor. 

“What do we do with this stuff?” Scully asked Mulder, feeling the need to be armed before realizing how ridiculous that was. 

Just then, the slime began to solidify, growing taller and taller until it was completely upright in the doorway of their kitchen. A slit started to appear near the top, opening and getting wider and wider until it formed a sort of mouth, which promptly opened and released a shriek so loud they all instinctively covered their ears.

“Run!” Mulder yelled, as they all turned to get away from the slime monster. At some point, Jackson must have put Lily down, because Scully saw her toddling towards the orange glob, brandishing a foam sword Mulder had bought for her at the renaissance fair the previous summer. 

“Lily!” Scully screamed, and the slime shrieked back. 

Jackson grabbed a Nerf gun, one of many he and Mulder used for epic battles in their backyard, and ran toward the slime. “I’ll get her!”

Jackson was shooting the Nerf bullets as Lily poked and slashed at the slime monster. To the surprise of both Mulder and Scully, it seemed to be working. The slime monster was moving back towards the kitchen.

“Mulder, get a bag! A garbage bag!” Scully yelled.

“Scully this thing is huge,” he yelled, waving the mop in front of the slime before throwing her a pink toy broom.

“The big leaf bags!” Scully yelled. “They’re on the porch. I’ll get them and run around the back. Push it to me and we’ll get it in the bag.”

Scully ran out the front door, holding her pink plastic broom in case she needed to use it as a weapon. The bags were tucked in the corner of the porch where they had left them the last time they raked. She grabbed one and ran as fast as she could to the back of the house. She could see the orange blob through the windows in the kitchen and could tell that her family was succeeding at pushing it back.

Scully flung open the back door and yelled to Mulder, “I’ve got it! Help me get it in the bag!”

Lily stood in front of the slime, waving her little sword and shrieking with laughter as if preventing a slime monster from consuming her family was the best and funniest moment of her life. Jackson stood behind her strategically shooting the slime monster first on its left “shoulder,” and then on its right, effectively making it shimmy backward. 

“I’ve got the edge of it in the bag!” Scully shouted as she used the pink broom to coax the slime towards her. 

Mulder smashed the mop down on the top of the slime, over and over again, causing it to get shorter and shorter while Lily continued to wave her sword, yelling “Ya! Ya!”

The bag was filling, and her family was getting closer and closer. It was almost all there, when Jackson shot one more Nerf bullet straight at what must have been its head. It let out one final shriek and fell to the ground before they all quickly shoved the rest of it into the bag. Mulder ran forward, tying the bag in a double knot. 

They all stood for a moment, staring at each other in shock, before Lily jumped on the bag yelling “Bad! Bad! Bad!” as she stomped and stomped, flattening the slime bag as flat as a pancake. 

“Jackson, what on earth are you filling this poor girl’s head with?” Scully asked, poking her head into the nursery. Jackson was sitting in the rocking chair with a pajama-clad Lily in his lap. Her eyes were wide. She was clapping her small pudgy hands with glee. 

“I’m just telling her a bedtime story,” he said, feigning innocence. 

“About monsters?” Scully asked. 

“A slime monster,” he clarified with a sly grin on his face. Lily chimed in, reaching towards Scully with a “Momma Momma!”

She walked over and pulled her daughter into her arms, nuzzling her nose into the toddler’s neck, making her giggle. 

“It could have killed us all,” Jackson said in a story-teller’s tone of wonder, and gestured to Lily “but this little hero here fought it back with her mighty sword while her brother, the best Nerf sharp shooter in Virginia assisted in fighting that monster into the deep, dark, garbage bag, never to be heard from again.”

“Dance! Dance!” Lily yelled, clapping her hands as Mulder walked into the room, taking in the scene of his perfect family, all together, with smiles on their faces. 

“Oh, you don’t want to see him dance,” Scully said, giving Mulder a knowing look. 

“Dance, huh?” Jakson said, placing his hand to his chin, pretending to be deep in thought. “Okay little miss, where did we leave off? I believe the brave Lily had just jumped on that bagged up slime monster and stamped him as flat as a pancake. When she requested a dance, her family, so happy to be alive and so taken by her bravery, agreed there was no better way to celebrate, so they used that squashed slime monster as a dance floor and together, they danced the night away. The end.”

Everyone was quiet, except for Lily who clapped and blew spit bubbles, making them laugh. 

“Man,” Mulder said. “What did I miss?”

Scully smiled. Life in the unremarkable house with all the people that mattered most to her was sweeter than she could have ever imagined. She wrapped her arm around Mulder. “Jackson was just spinning a tall tale about a paranormal monster who was defeated by the Mulder family,” she said looking at her son with pride. “Like father, like son.”


End file.
